Assembly elections 2026: A tale of three record voter turnouts unfolds

From Vijay's rise in Tamil Nadu to BJP's edge in Bengal, record turnout reflects voter churn and emerging challenges to entrenched players

In November last year, actor-turned-politician Vijay had said that the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, then nearly six months away, would be a battle between the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and his party, the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK). Responding to him, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) chief and prominent DMK ally Vaiko said: “Does he know the ABCD of politics? ... He is blabbering something, he is building castles in the air, it will never become reality.” Vaiko also attacked Vijay over the Karur stampede, which claimed over 40 lives, calling his actions “irresponsible and condemnable”. 

 

In the exit-poll results, announced on April 29, a majority of the surveys predicted that the newbie party would win a significant number of seats, with some even projecting a possible chief ministership for its chief. In a plot twist straight out of the masala films Vijay is most famous for, Vaiko on May 1 said in an interview with news agency ANI: “TVK will be a force to reckon with, and it may produce surprises when the results are declared … There is a swing among the students and first-time voters in favour of TVK.”

 

 

The political veteran’s words reflect the general mood of Tamil Nadu, which on April 23 recorded a voter turnout of 84.6 per cent, the highest since Independence. The high polling percentage is also a reflection of the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll, which saw 7.4 million names deleted from the state’s electoral roll. 

 

Even as the Dravidian movement and identity remain central to Tamil Nadu’s political discourse, it can’t be denied that Vijay’s entry has upended the scales. For about 50 years, the state has seen a tussle for power between the DMK and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), with voters frequently opting for anti-incumbency in every election since 1977.  

 

But this time, to an extent, the contest is not so much between these two, but rather between the DMK and TVK — an echo of what Vijay had said back in November. As the TVK stormed social media, with clips of Vijay’s speeches and stage entries going viral almost every week, observers commented that Chief Minister M K Stalin and his deputy, Udhayanidhi Stalin, were imitating his style of delivering speeches, in a bid to appeal to the youth. There were also short-form videos comparing how Stalin was copying Vijay’s signature scarf gesture — most of these were accompanied by a clip of Vijay calling Stalin “uncle” at one of his rallies. 

 

Another example of Vijay using his larger-than-life star persona to increase his potential vote share was seen in his final campaign speech on April 21 in Chennai, where he, using tactics like crying and throwing tantrums, urged children to get their parents and families to vote for him. There were also videos on social media, where children could be seen threatening violence if their parents and families didn’t vote for the TVK — Vijay explicitly endorsed this while campaigning in Salem and asked his young fans to “continue this”. 

 

While the TVK social-media ecosystem found this phenomenon “cute”, the Tamil Nadu Commission for Protection of Child Rights (TNCPCR) on April 29 asked the director-general of police (DGP) to take legal action against Vijay after concerns were raised by the Tamil Nadu Child Rights Watch over the “emotional exploitation of children for electoral influence” in the TVK’s campaign. 

 

Vijay is not the first and probably won’t be the last Tamil superstar to enter politics. However, what he has turned out to be, irrespective of the election results, is a true disruptor — for half a century, the two major Dravidian parties sat more or less secure in their rivalry, but with “Thalapathy”, as his legions of fans and now party supporters call him, the threat of vote splitting and the prospect of a non-Dravidian party coming to power in Tamil Nadu has become more real than it ever has. Who ultimately benefits from Vijay’s entry will be decided on May 4, but it’s unlikely that the TVK will fade away from political memory anytime soon. 

 

Perhaps the situation was best summed up by an auto driver in Kanyakumari. He told this writer in November last year that he and his entire family would be voting for the TVK: “Sometimes, just having the possibility of change is good ... Vijay will keep the big ones (DMK and AIADMK) on their toes.”

 

Meanwhile, West Bengal too saw a record voter turnout of 92.47 per cent in its two-phase polling cycle. The state’s electoral roll saw a deletion of 9 million names in the SIR process, with Muslim voters accounting for more than a third of the total. 

 

The Trinamool Congress (TMC), which has been in power in the state since 2011 after ending the Left Front’s 34-year regime, now faces the possibility of being routed out by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — almost every exit poll has predicted that the BJP will have a clear edge over the TMC.

 

The discourse in Bengal this time was marked by the SIR, industrialisation, law and order, women’s safety and the bogey of “infiltrators”. However, another issue managed to find its way into the spotlight: Whether or not the BJP would ban non-vegetarian food if voted to power. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in a rally in Purulia in March, had said: “Fish is not eaten in BJP-ruled states. If the BJP comes, you won’t be able to eat meat or eggs.” 

 

In response, the BJP had several of its prominent leaders eating fish while on the campaign trail. In one incident, Northeast Delhi MP Manoj Tiwari responded to photos of him eating fish with: “The fish I ate was prepared without any onions or garlic, in the sattvik tradition. To link it with meat-eating is wrong.”

 

Neighbouring Assam too saw “infiltrators” as one of its dominant election themes, with Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma saying in January: “Trouble the Miya Muslims by any means. If they face trouble, they will go from Assam … We are directly against the Miya Muslims. We are not hiding anything; we directly say that we are against Miyas.”

 

The election campaign also saw Sarma fashion himself as a ‘mama’ (maternal uncle) through welfare schemes and women-centric initiatives of the state government. However, he stirred up a controversy when he attacked the Assam Jatiya Parishad’s (AJP’s) 27-year-old candidate from Guwahati Central, Kunki Chowdhury, over alleged photos of her mother eating beef on social media. He also claimed that Kunki’s mother, Sujata Gurung Chowdury, had made posts supportive of Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid on social media. 

 

The principal Opposition, the Congress, saw some prominent leaders like Pradyut Bordoloi leave the party to join BJP — which led Jorhat MP Gaurav Gogoi to state that the current BJP in Assam is “is a Congress led by Sarma, merely carrying the BJP tag”. Speaking to Business Standard, he said: “The BJP in Assam has been destroyed by the chief minister. The veterans of the party who built the BJP are sidelined and it’s been completely hijacked by Sarma and his previous Congress colleagues. Unlike before, the BJP no longer rewards leaders based on their contributions to the growth of the party but rather on the fact that who is closer to the CM and his group of old Congressmen who are just wearing the saffron label. These were the group of people whose corruption and misdoings led to people rejecting the Congress party in Assam in the past and now their ideological corruption will lead to the demise of the BJP.”

 

Exit polls, however, present a different picture: They project that the BJP-led alliance will win the election, which too saw a record 85.91 per cent voter turnout, by its largest margin yet in the state, while the Congress will see a sharp decline.